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(*)

Then a lawyer said, "But what of our Laws, master?"
And he answered:

You delight in laying down laws,
Yet you delight more in breaking them.
Like children playing by the ocean who build sand-towers with
  constancy and then destroy them with laughter.
But while you build your sand-towers the ocean brings more sand to the shore,
And when you destroy them, the ocean laughs with you.
Verily the ocean laughs always with the innocent.

But what of those to whom life is not an ocean, and man-made laws are
  not sand-towers,
But to whom life is a rock, and the law a chisel with which they
  would carve it in their own likeness?
What of the ******* who hates dancers?
What of the ox who loves his yoke and deems the elk and deer of the
  forest stray and vagrant things?
What of the old serpent who cannot shed his skin, and calls all
  others naked and shameless?
And of him who comes early to the wedding-feast, and when over-fed
  and tired goes his way saying that all feasts are violation and all
  feasters law-breakers?

What shall I say of these save that they too stand in the sunlight,
  but with their backs to the sun?
They see only their shadows, and their shadows are their laws.
And what is the sun to them but a caster of shadows?
And what is it to acknowledge the laws but to stoop down and trace
  their shadows upon the earth?

But you who walk facing the sun, what images drawn on the earth can hold you?
You who travel with the wind, what weathervane shall direct your course?
What man's law shall bind you if you break your yoke but upon no
  man's prison door?
What laws shall you fear if you dance but stumble against no man's
  iron chains?
And who is he that shall bring you to judgment if you tear off your
  garment yet leave it in no man's path?
People of Orphalese, you can muffle the drum, and you can loosen the
  strings of the lyre, but who shall command the skylark not to sing?

For example: the frogs
find a dinner plate, and an acorn
makes funny gestures from beneath the dirt.
And the string twangs, as was expected.

How simple, how unlikely to happen to us.
Only a misplaced vector connects
the pine tree’s yowl to the sandbox,
which, if you don’t think about it, is alright.

I get confused so many times
before I stop and train my thoughts.
And again: the sound I hear
is either walnuts cracking or red birds

splashing into windows. But
the movements have been extinguished
and the two are so dissimilar they may as well
be the same. Or watermelons

stomping insects underfoot. In
the other room of this house is a man
walloping a rooster with a broom,
but the rooster is too scared

to tell him just how effective
positive thinking is, just as oceans
are too murky to provide freethinkers
with a useful metaphor.

Of course not, said a man
lifting his cat from pool. But then
it was too late, and something
was pulling whimpers through the air.

Love is nakedness
Not just under the sheets
But before God and Everyone
And I don’t want you to see me naked
I don’t want anyone to see me naked
I don’t want you to see my fragility, my vulnerability
Allow me to carry on my charade
Allow me to go on thinking I’m strong and brave
My heart is locked up in the highest tower
And I don’t have the key

Joni(1) said love is give and take
But you never gave yourself to me
I had to take you
We all had to take you
That way when things went bad
And they always did
In your heart you were never to blame
I thought I was so in love with you
Now I hope I never see you again

We had fun woman
Our voices sang beautiful harmonies
You smiled me soft and hard
I surprised you when I whispered in your ear
At the Chinese restaurant
And laid my head down on your shoulder for a second
You tore your blouse open in the church parking lot
When I was describing your stature you corrected me
“I don’t have to stick it out.  It’s always like that.”
You were all toughness and fragility
The kind of beauty that never fades
But you were too wild girl
No one could truly satisfy you
Not me, not your husband, not anyone

For Dr. Suess

Who can hear you?
He who hears Whos
Wish I could hear half as well
And what is a Who anyhow?
Do such tiny people really exist?
Is the town of Who-ville a true ville?
Perhaps if I had elephant ears
Maybe I could hear a Who too
As it is I can hardly hear you
But last night in a dream
Horton whispered his secret
An axiom kind and smart:
You only listen with your ears
You hear people with your heart

We were born with a flood
and the town welcomed us in:
everyone's arms strung in an endless blanket.
I looked up at my mother, remembering
when she was my shelter.

I had heard the beating;
it was rough, it was heavy, real
somehow. But it was not life.
She lost so much of me during the birth.

I grew up on weekdays, never the
weekends, those were a haze.
My body stretched but followed the
form of the flowers, stooped and wilting
in the fall.

Summer was too thick, the air, the trees
were luscious but painful to look at.
Winter was a noose around my neck,
I felt each snowflake before it fell.

But spring! I was in my element.
My leaves unfurled, my petals opened -
beauty, in the ****, green flesh, human.
You only saw me then. You only
wanted to hold me then.

My mother blessed you in a
shower of nervous chatter, her way
of making you a part of things.
But you were always distant, far from here
in some tiny glass sphere or cube.

I knew when you stopped calling; it
was the end of spring but I hadn't
yet begun to bend.
But you were always right on time
to cut yourself free of me.